Obama Inauguration Sets Internet Records

Yesterday's President Obama inauguration had U.S. citizens flocking to the Internet in record numbers. According to Bill Woodcock, the research director at the Packet Clearing House, Internet traffic in the U.S. hit a record peak at the start of President Obama’s speech -- higher than the election of President Obama.

CNN served up more than 21.3 million video streams by mid afternoon. At their peak, CNN.com fed 1.3 million live streams simultaneously, according to Jennifer Martin, a spokeswoman for CNN. Akami, a web company that provided streams to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Viacom, said they streamed over seven million videos.

Although some reported of wait times or disconnects, tech companies said it went off without a hitch, and cubicle rats all over the country were able to check out the Presidential inauguration.

The past record for Internet video traffic was 5.3 million streams provided during all of 2008's Election Day. At its peak, according to Woodcock, the surge of traffic for the inauguration was mostly a U.S. thing, so it's unlikely to set worldwide records.

I watched the inauguration on CNN, which integrated with Facebook. That allowed me to watch the stream of the event while making comments about Aretha Franklin's hat to my friends. It was surprisingly seamless and integrated and worked perfectly... But I also TiVoed it, just to make sure.

How about you? How did you watch the inauguration? Did your streams work? Or did you skip it? What did you think?